That explains it. Symlinks aren't normally followed for things like compressing. The symlink allows the actual content to be elsewhere, like maybe in your /home/username directory. You need to transfer the actual content, wherever that is. If you're not sure, do
ls -l /usr/local/cpanel/base/frontend
in shell and see where the symlink points to.

On the old server I found that the symlink (found in /usr/local/cpanel/base/frontend) points to /usr/local/cpanel/base/frontend/x

on the new server the symlink is not there in /usr/local/cpanel/base/frontend (probably because it wasn't pkg'ed since it was a symlink).

So my question now is do I just create a symlink with the same name as the one on the old server and point it to the /usr/local/cpanel/base/frontend/x directory? And if so what is the code? I've tried ln -s /usr/local/cpanel/base/frontend/x | nameofsymlink but I get "can't overwrite directory" message.